Sussex Yokels

I. B. Wuneram

Turn your computer sound ON and hear snatches of real Sussex accent!

HE
furious pace of change in the 20th century effectively
exterminated a once common sub-species of homo
sapiens that existed in the more remote parts of Sussex. I refer
to homo sapiens rustica sussexii otherwise known as the
Sussex Yokel. These denizens of the Sussex hinterland were
already a dying breed by the time of Darwin, but the effects of
the railways, roads, motor vehicles, TV and radio together with
the influx of Londoners have changed rural Sussex for ever. In
the fight for survival they have perished.

Remote clusters of these Sussex yokels were known to
nineteenth century anthopologists but their existence was largely
ignored, probably because there was some shame attached to
acknowledging that they could be our ancestors, albeit an
inferior breed. It is thought that the pure strain finally died
out somewhen in the late 1940's. There are virtually no traces of
them today, though there have been unattested sightings in
Buxted, Barcombe, Burwash, Netherfield and Dallington from time
to time.

The genotype is thought to be derived from a distant relation
of Neandertal man that interbred with early settlers, probably
the beaker people, about 2000 BC. They found a niche in the more
remote parts of Sussex, a deeply forested area until the Norman
conquest, where their descendants merged into the local
population to form what are now called the Sussex Yokels. They
were, by virtue of their isolation, a sturdy, self-reliant, one
might even say bloody-minded bunch that did not suffer fools,
foremen and faint-hearts gladly.

The heraldic arms of the Sussex Yokel are
engrossed by the Herald Pursuivant Fitz-Norris Extraordinary as

It symbolises the well-known reluctance of the Sussex yokel to be
coerced into anything that he did not want to do. If there was
one thing that they couldn't take, it was being ordered about.
This independent streak did not endear them to their Norman
masters, landed lords, and local gentry. It is no coincidence
that Jack Cade, the leader of the Kentish peasant revolt in the
15th century was caught and killed in the wilder parts of Sussex
near Heathfield. The Sussex peasant had no great love for Henry
VI, but they could see that Cade was a "furinner" and potential
problem. They soon sorted him out. Independent and stubborn they
were: stupid they were not. The Sussex yokel had, over the
centuries, evolved a low cunning that was a match for anyone in
authority.

When I was a
very young boy I knew several of them but did not realise at the
time that they were a separate sub-species. They were mostly
elderly farm workers, labourers, grooms, domestic servants and
the like living out their twilight years in quiet backwaters of
the Weald. They could easily be spotted by their dress and their
strange way of talking. They had a very limited knowledge of the
world beyond the nearest village. This lack of contact was the
principal reason that they retained their own speech forms and
dialect words most of which have now disappeared. A distant great
aunt of mine, born in the late 1860s had lived in her village all
her life except for one visit to Eastbourne as a young woman.
This involved a walk of about seven miles to the railway and a
journey of almost an hour. She found the experience so terrifying
that she never went "abroad", as she referred to it, again.

She spoke one of the very oldest of the Sussex dialects
similar to that studied by the Rev. W D Parish, vicar of
Sedlescombe, and published in his "Dictionary of the Sussex
Dialect" and Charles Fleet, author of "Glimpses of our Ancestors
in Sussex". It was works of this type that led to the publication
of several humourous poems and short stories using these words in
the form of Sussex doggerel in late Victorian times.
Unfortunately these cannot capture the true phonetic quality of
the dialects when read because the end result depends to a large
extent on the actual natural pronunciation of the speaker. It is
a great shame that these Sussex dialects, in their true form,
died out before the advent of high quality electronic
recording.

One of these narrative poems I have in my possession - an
early copy of " 'Tom Cladpole's Jurney to Lunnun' as told by
himself and written in Pure Sussex Doggerel by his Uncle Tim".

The tale goes on for 152 verses setting out Tom's adventures
walking to London and his misadventures among the supposedly
sophisticated Londoners, who were no match for this crafty Sussex
rustic. It uses many dialect words. However it is clearly
written by an educated man, probably a clergyman, with no real
ear for the natural speech of the locals; it uses too many
constructions that they would not use. One day, when I have the
time, I will submit the whole poem to the OL Webmaster for his
consideration, if anyone is interested.

It was not until I arrived at LCGS that it began to dawn on me
that I had inherited much of the Sussex yokel's dialect and
speech forms. Nor was I the only one. Having arrived at LCGS from
a small village school on a scholarship, I found I was one of
several from a similar background in form 2A. Those that had come
from the towns - Lewes, Newhaven, Seaford, - spoke a patois
already contaminated with received pronunciation. Even more
noticable were the fee-paying boys in form 2B who were mostly the
sons of local business men, shop keepers, civil servants and the
like. Some of these boys had been to small prep schools, of a
type rarely found today, and they arrived at LCGS with affected
accents picked up from public school prep-school masters.

The person who ruthlessly exposed this deficiency in our
speech, for it was considered to be a distinct handicap, was the
late Mr Auld, the French master, a man whose only known pleasures
in life were smoking Woodbines and making life a misery for small
boys. He was forever making sarcastic comments about the local
yokels and their dreadful accents and speech forms. "Je suis
tombe", he would say, "or as those of you from Piddenhoo say, '
Oi cum croppa' ".

Play it →

He was right, of course, our speech was very rough and ready
when we arrive at LCGS, but it soon changed. We soon picked up
the speech forms that were the norm for middle-class Lewes. The
problem then stood on its head. Our village friends looked
askance when we spoke and they began making comments about
"snobby grammar school boys"! So we had to become bilingual.
That was the first time that we learnt how to modulate our speech
to suit the listener - a technique commonly used, often
subconsciously, to oil the wheels of daily life. One tends to
"have a chat with the vicar" in a different voice and tone than "
'avin a word with that bloke down the pub". What an awkward
linguistic dilemma when the bloke down the pub is the
vicar!

After the war I moved to the West Country and have stayed
there ever since. Living well away from the influence of London
in a quiet backwater, I have been able to retain elements of my
Sussex accent. But on my now infrequent visits to Sussex I get
funny looks from most of the locals who appear to be
speaking with an unpleasant nasal twang that sounds, to my ears,
like one continuous whinge. "Estuary English" I believe it is
called. Ghastly. Would that I could hear the old soft tones of
the true Sussex yokel as it was sixty years ago. I'll drink to
that!